No one had heard of a Florida teenager named Trayvon Martin when a group of Wisconsin Republicans got together last year to discuss expanding a self-defense bill before the Legislature.

The bill, known as the Castle Doctrine, made it harder to prosecute or sue people who used deadly force against an intruder inside their homes. But the Wisconsin legislators, urged on by the National Rifle Association in a series of meetings, wanted it to go further. They crafted an amendment that extended the bill’s protections to include lawns, sidewalks and swimming pools outside the residence, as well as vehicles and places of business.

This combo made from file photos shows Trayvon Martin, left, and George Zimmerman. (AP Photo)

That expanded bill, passed with little debate by the Legislature and signed in December by Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, is the newest of more than two dozen so-called “stand your ground” statutes enacted around the country in recent years. Those laws are coming under increased scrutiny after Martin was shot to death by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch coordinator, in late February.

Similar legislation is pending in several other states, including Alaska, Massachusetts and New York.

Pennsylvania’s Castle Doctrine was expanded last year to state that a person does not have to retreat from an attacker even outside the home.

The laws, which expand beyond the home the places where a person does not have a duty to retreat when threatened and increases protection from criminal prosecution and civil liability, vary in their specifics and in their scope. But all contain elements of the 2005 Florida statute that made it difficult to immediately arrest Zimmerman, who has claimed he shot Martin, who was unarmed, in self-defense.

Critics see the laws as part of a national campaign by the NRA, which began gathering Thursday for its annual meeting in St. Louis, to push back against limits on gun ownership and use. That effort, they say, has been assisted by conservative legislators in states such as Wisconsin, and by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which has promoted model legislation based on Florida’s law. The council, known as ALEC, is a conservative networking organization made up of legislators, corporations such as Wal-Mart, a large retailer of long guns, and interest groups such as the rifle association.

The success of the campaign is reflected in the rapid spread of expanded self-defense laws as well as laws that legalize the carrying of concealed weapons — only one state, Illinois, and the District of Columbia ban that practice, compared with 19 states in 1981. Bills pending in several states that would allow concealed weapons to be carried on college campuses, in churches, in bars or at other sites would further weaken restrictions, as would either of two federal bills, now in the Senate, that would require that a concealed-carry permit granted by any state be honored in all other states.

“Both directly and with cutouts like ALEC, the NRA is slowly and surely and methodically working at the state level to expand the number and kind and category of places where people can carry concealed, loaded weapons and use them with deadly force,” said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a bipartisan coalition of more than 650 mayors that has not taken a position on the stand your ground laws.

Repeated requests to speak with NRA officials about Wisconsin’s law or stand your ground laws more generally met with no response.

In a legislative alert on its website, the NRA asked members to “please express your support for this critically important self-defense legislation” and for “NRA-recommended amendments to these bills in order to make the final product a stronger law.”

The bill, the association said in the alert, “ensures that you don’t have to second-guess yourself when defending your home from intruders.”

“It also provides civil immunity for good citizens who are acting defensively against violence.”

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